Pioneer Square policeman named officer of the year

By CASEY MCNERTHNEY, SEATTLEPI.COM STAFF

Updated 10:00 pm, Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Photo: Joshua Trujillo/seattlepi.com

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Seattle Police officer Chris Myers (right) drives a patrol car with officer Travis Hill in downtown Seattle on Tuesday. Meyers was named Officer of the Year and has earned the respect of many of his peers.

Seattle Police officer Chris Myers (right) drives a patrol car with officer Travis Hill in downtown Seattle on Tuesday. Meyers was named Officer of the Year and has earned the respect of many of his peers.

Photo: Joshua Trujillo/seattlepi.com

Pioneer Square policeman named officer of the year

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Late Monday night, police got a call about a group of women fighting in the International District. One was armed with an umbrella.

Officer Chris Myers pulled his car behind them, then got in amongst the angry group. When one woman who had been ordered to leave slowly walked back for more, he charged up the street.

"What did I tell you?" he asked, calm but assertive. The woman turned and walked away.

Standing well over 6 feet, Myers appeared anything but shy in that case, or in another incident later that night involving a man suspected of assaulting a Uwajimaya store employee.

Fellow officers and business owners who know Myers from working nights in Pioneer Square have dozens of stories about what they say is his tireless energy and superior tactical intelligence.

Some shared those tales in support of his Officer of the Year nomination. Friday night at the Sheraton Hotel, Myers will receive that honor at the eighth annual awards banquet, sponsored by the Seattle Police Foundation.

Thing is, as a high school kid he didn't always picture himself being that well-respected cop.

"I was painfully shy," he said.

That lasted into college -- Evergreen State -- where things started to change when Myers took a course called the stage fright workshop. After graduation, he expected to be an art teacher.

Myers, passionate about police training, still uses the skills he developed to be a high school teacher. It's a big part of what earned him the top officer award.

"He cares about the people in the neighborhood and takes the time to get to know them, talk with them, and listens well to what they have to say," managers of the Last Supper Club wrote in a nomination letter.

They talked of his "unbelievable degree of patience," and said he often talks people into doing the right thing.

That communication is key, said Myers, 42.

"You start off polite and ask them to behave. Then you tell them to behave. And then you make them behave."

Early teaching inspiration

Myers' first class with Glenn Greer was more than two decades ago at Juanita High School, though that teacher's courses still stand out more than others.

"He provided enough individual challenge that I looked forward to the class," he said of an initial photography course. Greer encouraged peer teaching, having kids develop their skills by showing others. He'd step in later if some lesson elements were missed.

"He showed not all learning is about sitting in a chair, passively absorbing information being thrown at you from the front of the room," Myers said.

One of his assignments was to help a girl load film onto a reel for developing. She'd tried dozens of times and wasn't close.

He coached her through loading the plastic reel in the light until she was confident. Then she tried it in the dark, and Myers still remembers the excitement from her success.

"That was the first taste of it," he said. "I thought, 'I could do this for a while.'"

So he enrolled in courses to teach art. After graduating in the late 1980s, Myers sent applications to four or five school districts. He decided to also put in an application to be a police officer, as his dad had been for years in Seattle.

"I don't sit behind a desk well, knowing what I'll be doing day after day," he said, patrolling Fifth Avenue South. "Out here, I don't know what kind of call we'll get five minutes from now."

Passion for patrol

In his July nomination letter, Myers' sergeant, Colin Hotnit, told of when Myers was one of the first responding officers to a sexual assault in progress.

"Officer Myers coordinated the efforts of the officers at the scene and created an arrest scenario that minimized the chance the suspect would attempt to flee or resist arrest," Hotnit wrote.

When the Pyramid Alehouse was burglarized June 11, Myers was again one of the first on scene. Hotnit commended his building search plan, coordinating a dozen officers in two teams in addition to organizing a police perimeter.

Five suspects were taken into custody without incident.

Earlier this year after a Subway employee was assaulted in a strong-arm robbery near Yesler Way and First Avenue, Myers linked the suspect to an unrelated shoplifting call and arrested him in connection with both cases.

Some officers become savvier with time but lose the sheer excitement of going from 911 call to 911 call, said Sgt. Sean Whitcomb, who oversaw Myers in Pioneer Square last year.

"Chris was a really good example of balancing those two," he said. "And he was not one that hoarded his info or experience."

A 'significant benefit'

Myers' skills were put to use after the shootings at Columbine High School, when he wrote scenarios for rapid intervention training -- a department term for a kind of police response. The training was done inside the former seminary at St. Edward State Park.

After the WTO protests, Myers became more involved with less-lethal force options and worked with other officers to create a series of presentations that have been recognized by the National Institutes of Justice.

He shared those skills with officers in Oregon last February and officers in Texas last April. Myers, who also won the 2005 Medal of Valor, has been recognized as an expert witness at both the state and federal levels for less-lethal options.

He's also one of the originators of the Patrol Chemical Agent Response Team and helped develop the patrol team tactics curriculum.

His work "is clearly of significant benefit to our agency," Hotnit wrote.

Working with him in the West Precinct "was like having a second sergeant," colleague Eric Chartrand said.

"There are a lot of personalities and a lot of egos in police work, and it's not the easiest thing in the world to talk to an officer and tell him you think he did something not appropriate or wrong as far as technique," he said. "But Chris has the ability to say, 'Hey, next time you might want to think about doing it this way.'

"It doesn't make the person feel like he's being attacked, and he also learns from it."

MORE AWARD WINNERS: The full list of police award winners will be posted Friday night on the Seattle 911 blog.